"Giorgione is regarded as a unique figure in the history of art: almost no other Western painter has left so few secure works and enjoyed such fame..." Sylvia Ferino-Pagden.

My website, MyGiorgione, now includes my interpretations of Giorgione's "Tempest" as "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt"; his "Three Ages of Man" as "The Encounter of Jesus with the Rich Young Man"; Titian's, "Sacred and Profane Love" as "The Conversion of Mary Magdalen"; and Titian's "Pastoral Concert" as his "Homage to Giorgione".

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Last month I posted my initial thoughts on Michelangelo's Doni Tondo. Further reflection and reading as well as comments from friends and readers have led me to revise my interpretation. Below, find Part I of the revision.

Michelangelo’s
Doni Tondo is one of the greatest masterpieces of the High Renaissance. It is his
only surviving panel painting and now hangs in the Uffizi in its original
frame. Most scholars date it somewhere between Michelangelo’s completion of the
David in 1504 and his departure from Florence to Rome in 1506. Like many of the
masterpieces of this era, it has elicited many different interpretations. At first
glance it appears to be simply a traditional rendering of the Holy Family but,
on closer inspection, a number of questions arise.

In
the foreground Mary, Joseph, and the Infant Jesus are situatedin a landscape. But what is going on?
Is Mary handing the Child to Joseph, or is Joseph handing the Child to Mary?
Why does Mary look as she does with muscular arms shockingly uncovered? What is
Joseph doing in the painting? Why, despite tradition, has he been brought so
prominently into the center to play an apparently key role? What is the young
John the Baptist doing behind a parapet or wall in the midground? Finally, who
are the five male nudes in the background, and why are they there?

As
far as the first question is concerned, I originally agreed with Giorgio Vasari’s view that Mary
“presents” the child to Joseph. In his life of Michelangelo, Vasari wrote:

There came to Angelo Doni, a Florentine
citizen and a friend of Michelagnolo. who much delighted to have beautiful
things both by ancient and by modern craftsmen, a desire to possess some work
by Michelagnolo; wherefore that master began for him a round picture containing
a Madonna, who, kneeling on both knees, has an Infant in her arms and presents
Him to Joseph, who receives him. Here Michelagnolo expresses in the turn of the
head of the Mother of Christ and in the gaze of her eyes, which she keeps fixed
on the supreme beauty of her Son, her marvelous contentment and her lovingness
in sharing it with that saintly old man, who receives Him with equal affection,
tenderness, and reverence, as may be seen very readily in his countenance,
without considering it too long.[i]

Most
modern scholars disagree with Vasari’s opinion. In a 1968 essay Mirella Levi d’Ancona, because of her belief that Michelangelo was supporting a Dominican view
of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, saw the Child raising himself out of his
mother’s body as if he was actually being born and sanctifying his mother at
the moment of His birth. She wrote,

The Christ child—God incarnated in human
form—is issuing from the body of the Virgin to take his human form, and at the
same time blesses his mother, to bestow on her a special sanctification.[ii]

On
the other hand, in 2003 Timothy Verdon believed that the source of the Doni Tondo could be found in Marsilio
Ficino’s Neoplatonic concept of three kinds of love. As a result, Verdon argued
that not only was Mary receiving the Child but that the man in the painting was
not even St. Joseph.

the old man in the Tondo Doni seems to flout
the tradition of a passive Joseph, separate from Mary, for the simple reason
that he is not Joseph: he does not represent the surrogate father, but the real
one, God, from whom the Son proceeds ab
aeterno. Vasari was mistaken when he said that the old man “takes” the baby
from Mary; it is rather the baby who emerges from the Father, with his left
foot on the Father’s thigh and his little hands in Mary’s hair to maintain his
balance. The Baby, with his right foot on Mary’s arm, is about to push himself
up and over, in order to descend into the Virgin’s womb.[iii]

I
now believe that neither view is correct. Vasari was often mistaken or ill informed
but he was a close friend and confidant of Michelangelo. It would be almost the
height of temerity to reject his eyewitness description of the central feature
in this painting. Nevertheless, it would appear that he did not take more than
a glance at the painting. For example, he saw the Madonna kneeling although she
is obviously sitting.

It
is so easy to overlook or ignore important and obvious details in a Renaissance
masterpiece, but there are significant elements in the Doni Tondo that call for a new interpretation. Rather than handing
off the Child to Joseph, I would argue that Mary is actually elevating the body
of her Son in the same way that a priest elevates the Host or Body of Christ at
the Consecration of every Mass. The keys to this interpretation are the hands
of Mary, and the posture of Joseph.

The
position of Mary’s hands and fingers cannot allow her to
either hand the Infant Jesus off to Joseph or take the Child from him. As I pondered
the painting, I asked myself where had I seen hands like that before.
Eventually, I realized that Mary’s hands and fingers resembled a priest’s at
the Consecration. After the Second Vatican council liturgical norms in the Catholic
church were somewhat relaxed, but I remembered from my childhood that the
priest would take the host between the thumb and forefinger of both hands
before and during the elevation. Naturally, his other fingers would then close
or cup in the shape of Mary’s as he raised the host. Since the priest’s back
was to the congregation, he would raise the Host high above his head and look
at it intently in the same way Mary does in the Doni Tondo.

In
the art of the Renaissance it was common to equate the infant Jesus lying on
his mother’s lap, or on the ground surrounded by various worshippers, with the
Eucharistic host. The Portinari Altarpiece is one of the best examples. The
infant Jesus lies on the ground surrounded by worshippers including angels
wearing the vestments of altar servers. In Franciscan theology, for example,
even when Mary was holding her infant Son on her lap, she was the altar on
which the Eucharist rested.

Hugo van der Goes: Portinari Altaroiece

Verdon
noted that his view partly arose out of a conversation with the late famed art
historian Leo Steinberg. In 1974 Steinberg published a brief essay on the Doni Tondo in Vogue magazine. Steinberg’s
reputation was so great that practically every commentator on the Doni Tondo refers to the Vogue essay. In
that essay Steinberg saw deliberate ambiguity in Michelangelo’s famous painting
that makes it very difficult to determine who is handing the Child to whom. But he did find four levels of meaning including a Eucharistic one. Here is his ending.

Christian tradition made the Virgin’s
identity interchangeable with Ecclesia; and it made Joseph the typus apostolorum, protector and spouse
of the Church, “guardian of the living bread for himself and the whole world”
(St. Bernard). And as the maternal function of the Church culminates in the
Mass, which engenders the sacramental body of Christ, so in the tondo, the
unprecedented pitch of the Child above the Madonna prefigures the Elevation of
the Host, of the Corpus Verum, the Eucharist—literally, a “Thanksgiving.”[iv]

Steinberg
did note the “furled fingers” of Mary but only concluded thatsince no woman would ever receive a
child in that way, “she must have just let it go.” So, in his opinion, the raising of the Child
only “prefigures the Elevation of the Host….”

I
would also like to point out that the garments of Mary indicate a priestly
role. Michelangelo depicted her in her traditional red dress with her blue
cloak or mantle draped over her legs. But there is also a green cloth wrapped
around her on which a book, perhaps a Missal, rests. Green is still the color
of the priest’s vestments on most of the Sundays of the Church year.

The
concept of St. Joseph as protector and spouse of the Church is sufficient to
explain his prominent position in the Eucharistic celebration. The man inMichelangelo’s tondo bears all the
characteristics of St. Joseph as he was portrayed during the early decades of
the sixteenth century. Joseph was increasingly depicted as
a virile man quite capable of protecting his family especially on the flight
into Egypt. One just has to look at Raphael’s Sposalizio in the Brera. In
addition, the purple and gold coloring of his garments also identifies Joseph
as from the line of King David.

Even
more than these characteristics, the posture of Joseph confirms his
identification. He is behind Mary and the Body of Christ. At the consecration
of the Mass the sacrifice is offered to the Father above at the heavenly altar.
Also, we see that Joseph is not standing since he does not tower over the
sitting Madonna. Is he squatting awkwardly? Is he sitting on a hidden stool? We
can only see his right leg but it is bent at the knee. It would appear that
Joseph is kneeling or genuflecting as all worshippers do as the priest elevates
the Body of Christ. At the same time his left hand is placed firmly on the Infant’s
chest. Is he actually receiving Communion or just indicating the centralrole of the Church in the acceptance of
the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist?

Even before the Reformation doubts had arisen about the Real Presence. The building of the great Cathedral in Orvieto in response to the Eucharistic miracle at Bolsena is one example of the Church's response to these doubts. Raphael's so-called Disputa in the Vatican Stanze is another response. to be continued…###

[i]
Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, translated by
Gaston du C. De Vere, with an introduction and notes by David Ekserdjian,
Everyman’s Library, 1996, v. II, p. 656.

[ii] Mirella
Levi D’Ancona: The Doni Madonna by
Michelangelo: An Iconographic Study. Reprinted in Michelangelo, Selected Scholarship in English, edited with Introduction
by William E. Wallace, New York and London, 1995, V. 1.Life and Early Works, p.
404. This paper originally appeared in the Art Bulletin in 1968.